DVD REVIEW: 2009 JEFF PETERSON MEMORIAL CUP

By Stuart Carapola on 7/13/2010 8:41 AM

<p>Since I'm out of ROH and Dragon Gate USA DVDs to review for the time being, I decided that I'd review the Jeff Peterson Memorial Cup 2009, which was a two night tournament that was held in FIP, but included wrestlers from CZW, Hybrid Wrestling, and AAW. Gabe Sapolsky was very up front about the fact that aside from this being a major tournament, he was going to be using the show to scout talent to bring to EVOLVE when that promotion debuted about two months later. In a way, this was almost like watching EVOLVE 0 because most of the guys in the tournament have popped up in EVOLVE at one point or another, and some of them became major players there. That alone makes this a pretty important event in the Sapolsky/Hamaoui universe, and I'm always interested to see what politics, if any, come into play when you have more than one company involved in an event. Also, I don't know what happens and didn't read any spoilers, so I have no idea of any of the results ahead of time, so with that in mind I'm going to predict that Davey Richards will defeat Jon Moxley in the finals, so let's see how my prediction ability pans out this time around. So without further ado, let's get right down to it...</p><p><b><font size="3">Jeff Peterson Memorial Cup: Night One - 11/20/09</font></b></p><p>Night One of the tournament was held in Brooksville, Florida, and the tournament opened with Louis Lyndon (Hybrid) taking on Marion Fontaine (Hybrid). In terms of look and workrate, I wouldn't expect to see either guy in WWE anytime soon, but they both have very entertaining personalities. Lyndon is one of those stereotypical, 80s kung fu, Last Dragon type characters, complete with wearing the fake afro to the ring. Very spotty wrestler to watch, but if you're talking purely in terms of an entertaining character, he's probably got everybody else in this tournament beat. Fontaine is entertaining too, but in a different way, because he reminds me of one of those journeyman wrestlers you'd see floating around in Texas in the late 80s and early 90s, and when I was listening to his prematch promo, it really reminded me of the style of interview I would have heard in the old GWF. Okay match, Lyndon went over, but if you wanted just two fun characters to get the crowd going to start the show, they found the right two guys for the job.</p><p>Match #2 saw Chris Jones (FIP) take on Johnny Gargano (AAW), and I'm a little bit torn on what I think about both guys. With Gargano, he obviously has a ton of charisma and can be very entertaining when doing interviews and online promo stuff, but he shows zero personality in the ring, and that's when it's going to count for the people who aren't constantly looking him up on Youtube. With Jones, I like his energy and enthusiasm, he's obviously over with the Florida fans, and I think he's got potential to get really good one day, but for now I think it's a situation where being booked well covers for whatever shortcomings he has as an actual worker. To his credit, and this is going to sound like a weird comparison, he reminds me a lot of old school Sting where he's not the best wrestler around, but he knows how and when to make his comebacks, and for a guy that's been almost exclusively booked as an underdog since the first time I saw him, that is important. The match itself was pretty standard, though I was a bit surprised to see Gargano go over considering whose home turf this match was on.</p><p>Next up we went to Dave Cole (Hybrid) taking on Silas Young (AAW) in our third opening round match. I've never seen Cole, who happens to be the Hybrid Champion, before but he seems solid enough, but the thing that drives me up the wall about watching Silas Young wrestle is that I think he's solid, he's got a good look, and has all the tools to be a good worker, but he's so concerned with doing stuff that looks cool that his work suffers. I see it with him all the time, including in this match, where he'll do stuff like obviously get himself into position to take a move before the person would logically be in position to deliver it, or obviousl feeding his legs to somebody to deliver a move on him. And also, the headstand into the springboard moonsault thing looks cool, but takes too long to set up and, frankly, it would look better if he just did the springboard moonsault because I don't think the headstand adds anything. That said, I did like this match, it was hard fought and both guys looked like they were trying to win and advance, so other than the Silas stuff I talked about I enjoyed this one. Silas got the win with the headstand moonsault to advance, and I do also have to wonder about the politics involved with a company's top champion going down in the first round of this tournament.</p><p>We move on to the fourth first round match, which saw Jon Moxley (CZW) take on Brad Attitude (FIP), who you may also know as Brad Allen in EVOLVE. Moxley's whole attitude on this entire tournament, as we discovered during a backstage interview segment, is that he doesn't think of this as some special event where everybody has to put their personal differences aside and act honorable, he thinks that's BS because he doesn't like or respect anyone else in the tournament and he's not going to pretend he does. He actually walked out on the group photo segment that opened the event because he didn't see the need to play nice, and it fits perfectly into his character as this nonconformist who doesn't buy what society's trying to sell him. Moxley got the win, which I expected, though I was a little surprised to see him make Attitude tap out.</p><p>We're halfway through the first round, and so we move on to Flip Kendrick (Hybrid) taking on Shane Hollister (AAW). Kendrick is another guy I've seen floating around in EVOLVE, and I've heard of Hollister but never seen him wrestle. I really wasn't impressed with either guy, Hollister seemed very generic, while Kendrick reminded me a lot of Jerrelle Clark in that he relies almost completely on overcomplicated, flippy dippy spots and doesn't appear to have any actual wrestling ability. To Kendrick's credit, while Jerrelle Clark was only able to hit almost 30% of the moves he tried, Kendrick does seem to have a better ratio, but I'm still not impressed by guys like him at all. Hollister won with the generic indy kick to the head to advance.</p><p>The next match saw TJ Perkins (FIP) take on Arik Cannon (AAW), and I've heaped a lot of praise on TJ in the past because I really do think he's an amazing and underrated worker, but after hearing about him going on the radio and complaining about his pay from EVOLVE and Dragon Gate USA and subsequently getting fired from both companies, I started thinking that maybe having a big mouth could be one of the reasons he's never gotten a stronger push than he has. If you have those kinds of complaints, you take it up with Gabe or whoever in private, you don't go on the radio because it really makes you look way worse than anyone else involved because it comes off as childish and whiny. So yeah, you're a great wrestler TJ, but maybe you'll learn to keep your mouth shut next time. As for this match, I enjoyed it a lot because it was a good mix of both men's styles, with Perkins taking over early with mat wrestling before Cannon just opened up and started destroying Perkins with high impact stuff. I liked the way they built to the end where they started pulling out the big stuff instead of just going nuts from the beginning, and it looked like it could have gone either way, because when it got to the end and they started hitting each other with all the big moves, there were several points where I thought the match was over. Perkins ended up going over, but I would have been satisfied no matter which of them won, and I don't think Cannon lost anything by taking the fall.</p><p>Next up was a clash of two CZW guys as Egotistico Fantastico (CZW) took on Scotty Vortekz (CZW), and the whole story of this was that they both felt that people look down on the ultraviolent style of CZW, so they wanted to give everyone a show and let them see what CZW was all about. Fortunately, it didn't get too out of control as the ultraviolence pretty much consisted of a brawl through the crowd at the beginning before it settled down into a more standard match once they got back in the ring. I don't think I've ever seen Fantastico before, but it was interesting in that he has a similar gimmick to what El Generico does, in that he's supposed to be a masked luchador who obviously isn't Mexican, except that Fantastico talks and gives his moves names that have to do with tacos and burritos. I thought he was a solid wrestler, and he's got more of a solid build than Generico as well. As for Vortekz, I know I definitely haven't seen him before, though he reminds me of that guy you went to high school with that everybody gets their...recreational supplies from. I really liked this, another hard fought match that you kind of figured Fantastico would win, and eventually did. They had a nice handshake before and after the match, which the crowd seemed to appreciate.</p><p>This brings us to the final match of the first round, as FIP Champion Davey Richards (FIP) took on CZW Champion Drake Younger (CZW). I'd only ever seen Younger wrestle once before this, at EVOLVE 3, and I wasn't really all that impressed. At the time, I referred to him as a kind of poor man's Eddie Kingston with slightly more wrestling talent, but after watching this match I have to give him a little more credit than that. While most of his offense does rely on brawling, he showed more wrestling ability as well as a few high risk moves in his arsenal as well, plus he's in a lot better shape than Kingston. Like most people are. I mentioned before I wondered about the politics involved in a company's champion going down in the first round of the tournament, but I also have to wonder about a second company's champion not only going down in the first round, but actually losing to another company's champion. You knew for a fact we were facing that scenario in this match, and this was a hell of a hard hitting match. This was also probably the best match of the first round, with only Perkins-Cannon coming close to matching it. Davey is just a machine, but Younger had a good showing as well, taking a lot of Davey's higher impact moves and kicking out before finally tapping out to give Davey the win. They had a nice moment at the end where Davey handed Younger his belt after the match and shook his hand, and then Younger gave a nice speech putting all the wrestlers over and hyping the following evening's show which would feature the remainder of the tournament.</p><p>Speaking of the rest of the tournament, let's not waste any time, let's finish this up on Page 2!</p>

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